May 20, 2014

This post describes how you add multiple Verilog files recursively to your project in Altera Quartus II. If you are using VHDL you can simply change the file matching from "*.v" to "*.vhd*".

Create a file named "addallv.tcl" in your project folder with the contents listed below. Change "myfolder" to the name of the sub-folder below your project folder that contains the files (or folders with files) you would like to add. Run it in the Tcl Console with:

May 16, 2014

The 8051 microcontroller (aka MCS-51 or 80C51) was develop by Intel in 1980. Still over 30 year later its architecture is widely used. In this post am using the lightweight 8051 compatible core ligth52 from Open Cores on the Altera Cyclone IV TB276 board from my previous posts. This implementation runs the core at 75 MHz. It has some precompiled examples. To develop your own code you need the free SDCC C-compiler.You will also need python. I use python xy.

May 11, 2014

This is an example design that defines the clock, led and button pins for the Canton-electronics TB276 board in one of my previous posts. It implements a small demo with the leds and buttons. Download the Verilog source code and project file from here: brd_test.qar. The .qar-file is an archive that can be extracted with Altera Quartus II.

How to build and download to the FPGA

1. Double click the .qar file to open it in Quartus II.

2. Press OK to extract the files and open the project.

3. Double click on Compile Design as illustrated below and wait for the compile to finish. It will take a few seconds.

Make sure that you have connected the power and the programming cable to the board. Make sure that the driver for the cable is installed. See my previous post for driver installation.

5. Hit the download button in the toolbar.

This will open the programmer window.

6. Press Hardware Setup to configure the programming cable.

7. Press Start to program the FPGA. Please note that this will program the FPGA directly and so the configuration is lost if power is cycled.